We must interrupt the regularly scheduled broadcast to bring you breaking news and, of course, my obligatory comment.
I’m a little behind on my blog reading *coughkindlecough* so this isn’t exactly hot off the press fresh. But today I learned that one of my all time favorite bloggers is calling it quits. Decorno is one of the very few honest decorating blogs among the thousands. The writer can illicit hundreds of comments with a title-less single photo. She (I don’t even know her name) is snarky and crass, and intelligent and insightful. And as inspiring as the posts are the comments.
I’m going to call this straight. The decorating blogsphere is dominated by fragile egos. Go out there, and try commenting honestly. Tell the blogger you are a little tired of their increasingly dishonest product endorsements, or tell them what they are currently swooning over is f-ing ugly. Or that perhaps the paint color they chose should be a tad warmer. They FREAK. I have seen bloggers cry over the tiniest hint of disagreement, only to have loyal sycophants jump all over the commenter for making their idol upset. “Oh, people are so MEAN! My delicate composition cannot handle this! Why is the world so rude?” Just recently, three bloggers did a podcast on “dealing with negativity”. Because you know, anyone who doesn’t agree with you is simply using negativity to get attention …
Not at Decorno. Oh no. Vulgarity and disagreement abound. The discussion is (was) honest. Decorno “got” that decorating is the most subjective discipline in the world. Decorno loved to call out stupid. Decorno wasn’t about ego. Decorno is going to be horribly missed.
Since most of you, my readers, know me personally, you won’t be surprised to hear that I received a valentine on Sunday that praised me for being blatantly honest. Integrity is my most valued character trait, and individuals with true integrity can state their opinion, and Receive Others’ Opinions without collapsing into a heap of thin skin. I find this to be a character trait that many decorator/writers lack.
I know it’s been awhile. Since I’ve been gone :
- The exterior I designed for the Arlington Rooftop Bar and Grill is half completed.
- Suzy has sent me photos of her finished Kitchen.
- My production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown closed Sunday. My sets were a big hit.
- And I finally got my Kindle!! My appreciation of such a wonderful gift is so deep, and I am hoping my team at TheaterWorksVA, who gifted it to me, are focused on the success of our company, as I may lose my real job if I don’t stop reading!
Pictures of all of the above starting tomorrow….
Schools are out this week for Spring Break. And typical for the last week of March, it is dark, gloomy and pouring rain. My children are home but asleep right now so I am experiencing that calm and quiet when most sounds are muffled by the clatter of the water running through the gutters.
The week will be ridiculously busy. We have rehearsal every afternoon. I need to visit the construction site to view EFIS color swatches and to take some measurements so I will need to do that early in the day, but after the DC morning rush.
I’m going to try schedule some time to run over to get photos from two ongoing projects to post, since I will have little time to write.
My husband was nice enough to run an errand for me today. He is picking up the poster I created for the play I am producing. Just like always, my interior design skills seem to translate into graphic design ability to the lay folk.
To be honest, I enjoy a rendezvous with Photoshop. Just not yesterday, when my computer decided to stage a mutiny. I wasted four hours I did not have waging war, but I thanks to Google, I was victorious.
Here is the poster. I have scheduled Friday for driving around town hanging them. If you click on it, it will bring you to a larger image which will allow you to view all the details. Maybe you can catch a performance?
The threat of bodily harm was everywhere. Booby traps lie at my feet, missiles hurdled across the ceiling, flails dangled just above my head. I tiptoed between hundreds of domino lines of tenuously balanced boulders.
I was a natural born klutz in a warehouse stocked with hundreds and hundreds of 7 foot slabs of granite.
My client is having her Kitchen counters redone and I accompanied her to Marble Systems Showroom to choose her slab. We had one of her cabinet doors, and I had selected the paint colors in most of her house, so it was easy work.
…outside of how ridiculously dangerous the place was. It was soon very clear why we were not able to enter the warehouse without signing a waiver. Long metal bars projected out at very different lengths from each stack of stones, so navigating the aisles was difficult. To make it worse, the paint on the metal had worn away, leaving them camouflaged against the concrete floor. In spite of the recession, the warehouse was bustling with activity. Workers moved stones on hydraulic cranes all around us. Big black boxes hung from the ceiling right at our heads. One of the slabs we considered was only feet from a huge pit that had been dug right in the center of the space, with little railing around it. In the middle of the pit, workers loaded a truck with slabs.
Beyond fearing for my life, I loved it there. Each huge slab was a work of art fashioned with nature’s fancy. I especially admired the pieces with Labradorite. For Cinde, we chose Shivakashi Gold with a 2 inch Copper Slate tile backsplash. It’s going to be perfect and definitely worth the jeopardy.
The wonderful thing about living outside a city like DC is the vast amounts of historical documentation. My client and I spent hours in the Virginia Room of the Arlington Public Library. We were so engrossed in pouring over the many books, albums and catalogues of archival photos that two hours flew by.
We are planning to use photos of the restaurant location through its history for wall art. The Arlington Courthouse, just across the street, has had three incarnations and lots of photos exist of it. The oldest photo of the area very near the restaurant is of a horse and carriage from 1911. Everything within view is farmland.
The librarian was very kind and helpful. We made a list of photos we want pulled to view for possible use and have an appointment next week with the archivist to discuss scanning them.
When I design sets, I am really picky about color. To a ridiculous degree. The color scheme of a production is really important to me. I obsess over every shade and hue, and I want the costumes and print materials to coordinate with my master plan. When I produced The Wizard of Oz, I wouldn’t allow one speck of blue anywhere. Dorothy’s blue gingham dress than distinguished her as an outsider.
I suppose set design gives me a chance to produce the over-the-top interiors I could never do in real life. The exaggerated qualities needed for the stage are so unlike my actual interior designs. …And crazy is expected in theater, so I get away with it…
I spent the evening studying three years worth of Charles Schulz’s strips. I want our set to have the same quality as his signature style of cartooning.
Today’s Friday Collage is not digital. It’s real.
The building on which the restaurant is being constructed is long and narrow. I am very conscious of this as I plan the design and the look of the furnishings. I am trying to add motion wherever possible, and incorporating circles on patterns and in details. There will be penny round tiles upon entering, a huge round table in front of a curved window looking out into Arlington, and the barstools have a line of circles drilled in the back.
When I was in New York, I designed three circular booths for the center of the Main Dining Room. They will each be upholstered in a high quality vinyl with a metallic curlicue design. The colors and the pattern harmonize very well with the glass tiles that will be placed on the enormous columns between the equally large windows.
It was love at first sight when I saw the vinyl. The pattern reminds me of my mother’s very 1962 Boomerang laminate countertops. I am using five colors to create wide stripes on the seatback of the ten regular booths.
Shopping in the New York City Bowery Restaurant Furniture District was a foreign experience. Not just because the shops are run directly by representatives from the Chinese factories, many of whom I did not hear speak one word of English.
My clients are first generation Indian, and out of habit — and because they are so at ease with me they forget I can’t understand Hindi– tend to slip into their native tongue.
Top that off by the STYLE of shopping. Going to New York to buy, rather than sightsee, well, that is unusual enough. But here in the Bowery, nothing is as it seems. Marked Prices mean nothing. I am used to and comfortable in dealing with the typical American shopping experience where the marked price is the reference. Sometimes that is what you pay. Often you pay a very figure-able percentage less, in the form of clear discounts or sales. I rarely pay “retail”, but “retail” is the standard—the place where you begin.
In the Bowery, the marked prices are useless, if they exist at all. The entire deal rests on the bargaining process. I watched in awe as my client worked Linda, the salesperson. And she was a tough cookie. She worked him equally as hard.
Imagine the scene: I sit between my clients exhausted from making so many selections. They discuss the finances in Hindi over my head. They hardball with Linda in English. She, in turn, discusses the propositions with the owner in Cantonese. He gets angry and yells. His son, just a toddler, races around the store screaming. Strange food smells overtake the shop in regular intervals. Outside there is the endless honking of traffic. Little scraps of paper are everywhere. The shop is overrun by clutter, toys, samples, and empty food containers. We spend tens of thousands of dollars and the young woman at the desk does not willingly give us a needed paperclip. Do they offer us parking? Laughable. They only grudgingly allow us to use their restroom after hours—no DAYS– in the shop. A drink? There is a vendor a few blocks down…
I’d go back and do it all again in a heartbeat.
